


honey (you're familiar)

by maurascalla



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, May/December Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7374313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maurascalla/pseuds/maurascalla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy is there when they pull Steve from the ice. </p>
<p>
  <i>“I think you owe me dance, Soldier,” she says, and he’s smiling too. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	honey (you're familiar)

She’s there when they pull him out of the ice, smaller than she was once and wrinkled, but she’s there, watching like a hawk. She’s just as sharp as she’d always been, just as observant. She sees Fury’s left hand man (Coulson, Phil) giggle like a schoolgirl, sees Fury’s right hand woman (Hill, Maria) glare at him balefully. Peggy can understand where the man is coming from. She gets it. 

It’s Captain America in that ice, after all. 

**

Fury wants to set him up in a fake hospital room, make him think he’s still in the 40's, with an agent wearing the wrong kind of bra and hair too loose. Peggy laughs at him, is really the only one who can get away with it, and does so often. 

“What do you propose we do,” Fury asks in that way of his. Disdainful, with no respect. It’s her favorite thing about him. “ _Former_ Director Carter?” 

“You don’t have to trick him, Fury. He’s too smart anyway.” Peggy rests her hands, small and gnarled, in her lap. She’s sitting in the chair across from his desk. She’d needed Coulson’s help getting there, but she made it. In her day, SHIELD hadn’t had quite so many stairs. “All you have to do is tell him the truth.” 

“Is that really the wisest-” Coulson begins, but Peggy silences him with a single quelling look. 

“Let me explain it,” she demands. “It’ll do him some good to see a familiar face.”

**

It takes him a couple of days to thaw out, a few more to wake fully, and even more for Fury to declare him fit to leave. All-in-all, it’s about a month before Steve Rogers sees the 21st Century in the flesh. Before that though, before the testing and before his release, he blinks open his blue, blue eyes and Peggy smiles. 

“I think you owe me dance, Soldier,” she says, and he’s smiling too. 

**

Steve is a little quieter than she remembers, and he was already a fairly quiet man. He spends many hours scouring the internet, trying to get caught up on the world, trying to make sense of it all. He’s better with his laptop than Peggy is with hers, his young fingers light on the touch screens in a way she could never quite manage. Youth. 

When he isn’t jumping through the web, he’s drawing pictures of the things he knew, of a world Peggy’s all but forgotten in the hustle and bustle of life, of growing old, of moving on. When she asks him about them, Steve shakes his head and tucks away his sketch books. 

“How’s my best girl?” He asks, deflecting. Peggy lets him and talks about her life, the way it was; talks about SHIELD and Fury and the girl she loved after Steve. 

Steve is happy for her, tells her so everyday. 

**

He was never supposed to stay. 

Steve was only meant to sleep in her guest bedroom until he found an apartment of his own, was adamant about living alone. Instead, one month turns into two, turns into three, and the next thing Peggy knows, she’s living with Steve Rogers. 

They make each other dinner, they both have chores (Steve doing the lion’s share, since he’s still so, so young and she’s not above using her age to get out of taking out her trash) and one day Peggy blinks and Steve’s art supplies are all over her apartment, his shield is resting by the front door. 

He kisses her cheek in morning, and again at night before he goes to bed. She’s an old woman, but she feels so young again, in those moments. He calls her his best girl, does it when they go to the store, when they go out for dinner. People assume she’s his grandmother, but he holds her hand. 

“Steve,” she says one day, the day she blinks and realizes they’ve skipped some steps. They’re sitting in the kitchen, Steve at the stove, stirring something in a pot. Peggy’s watching his shoulders from her seat at the table. “I won’t insult you by reminding you that you don’t have to spent all of your time with an old woman, but you do realize that I’ve lived my life. It’s time for you to go live yours.” 

“Unless you died and you’re speaking from beyond the grave,” Steve says, turning and crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m pretty sure you still have a life left to live, Peg.” 

She opens her mouth to retort, but he beats her to it, “I want to be here.” 

That night, after dinner, after their quiet evening in, Steve leans forward and Peggy offers up her cheek to him. He smirks and kisses her lips instead. 

**

Aliens invade New York, and Steve runs off to fight. “I don’t like bullies,” he says. “Even intergalactic ones.” 

She laughs, kisses him until they’re breathless, and tells him to come home in one piece. 

**

They move to DC and they’ve stopped pretending they need more than one room, one bed. She’s been in love before, she’s even been in love with this man before, but this feels different. For the first time, she doesn’t have to hide, doesn’t have her life’s work to maintain, no leads to follow. Instead, she goes to her book club, to her VA meetings, to her Stitch and Bitch. She’s active and busy and still has time to be utterly and absolutely in love. 

When Steve comes home from missions, and he’s never gone longer than a single night, he proudly wears the misshapen hats and gloves and sweaters she makes him with help from the people in her group. People still think she’s his grandmother, but it’s okay because Steve never kisses her like she is. 

**

They go dancing. All the time. 

**

“I love you,” he says. He says it all the time, into her shoulder, into hair, into her mouth. At the end of phone calls, at the end of the day, at the end of her life. Before that though, before she slips away, before she passes on, Steve holds her tight to his chest and she says, “I’ve been blessed.”

He laughs, and it’s wet. He’s been crying and crying and he replies, “You and me both.”

**Author's Note:**

> oh god, idek maurascalla.tumblr.com


End file.
